A cottage community is under construction on the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital campus in Jamaica Plain to house individuals experiencing homelessness from the Mass and Cass encampment. This is part of a housing-first strategy that aims to move those with addiction and mental illness to warm shelter with easy access to personal counseling and social services.
CCA will be running the community and providing wrap-around services, including substance use and mental health counseling, supervision of prescriptions, as well as instructions on how to move to more permanent housing.
“This is inviting [them] to a place that is secure housing; it is warm, and it has all these health care services in that setting, so they can get access to everything they need to get to a better place,” said Chris Palmieri, president and CEO of Commonwealth Care Alliance, which specializes in providing care for people with disabilities and mental illness. The alliance will be running the Shattuck community. “That’s what is so unique,” he said. “It’s that everything is right there.”